Thursday, May 13, 2010

The Museo Archeologico Santa Maria delle Monache in Isernia, Molise, is hosting an exhibit entitled 'Lungo le Rotte dei Micenei. L’insediamento dell’età del Bronzo di Monteroduni', which runs from April 22, 2010 until January 15, 2011. The exhibit focuses on material from the settlement at Monteroduni (IS), loc. Paradiso, where 12th c. BCE levels produced ceramics of Aegean inspiration. The MiBAC site has good illustrations.

A spiral-decorated sherd [picture above; scale is 2 cm] was published by Marco Bettelli (2006. "Un frammento di ceramica micenea da Monteroduni," in Atti del XXVI Convegno sulla Preistoria e Protostoria della Daunia (San Severo, Dicembre 2005), pp. 189-194); it is more likely to be a product of an Italo-Mycenaean workshop than an import from the Greek mainland. From the same levels come fragments of impasto dolia recalling Aegean prototypes. So, yes, there is some sort of information making its way from the Greek peninsula to the Italian, but maybe at one or two removes; it seems to me a bit of a stretch to speak of "routes of the Mycenaeans"– but I'm all for whatever (within reason) brings people into museums...

An account of the 2002-2007 Monteroduni excavations can be found in the latest issue of Archeomolise (2010. no. 4) pp. 20-31.

An intact sarcophagus was discovered during digging for a new water line in Via Liside, Taranto. The male burial dates to the late 5th or early 4th c. BCE, and included an aryballos, a strigil, and a bronze finger ring [Telenorba.it].

Meanwhile, in Umbria......the Soprintendenza resumed excavations at Monte Moro (Montefranco), site of a sanctuary used from the Pre-Roman period into Late Antiquity [Archeopg]....a Roman bronze bed from Gubbio's Fontevole necropolis is on display in the Antiquarium there, until December 31, 2010 [Archeopg]....the National Museum in Perugia is mounting an exhibit entitled 'Il prestigio del oro', featuring a gold crown of the late 4th/early 3rd c. BCE from a tomb at Sperandio, north of Perugia. The crown is on loan from Florence until July 31, 2010 [Archeopg].